


Ten Things You Need To Know

by plinys



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: F/M, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-07 09:05:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5451089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The love story of Theodosia Burr and Philip Hamilton told in ten parts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ten Things You Need To Know

**Author's Note:**

  * For [coffeesuperhero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeesuperhero/gifts).



> I saw in your letter that you might be interest in some PhilTheo, and to be honest, I will take any chance I can to write for this ship. So I hope you enjoy this little treat :)

1

A young lady is polite. She smiles as often as possible. She speaks only when spoken to.

And she most certainly does not punch Philip Hamilton in the face, even if he deserves it.

“Your father is a liar the only reason he got to be a senator is because he _cheated_ and stole it from my grandfather.”

Theodosia had never been prideful, it was not a vice that was encouraged in the Burr household, but she could not possibly be expected to stand here and listen as this awful boy slandered her father’s good name. She could not possibly be expected to keep smiling and nodding along as her family was insulted.

“If I were you, Mr. Hamilton, I would stop spreading slander, it isn’t polite.”

He seems momentarily surprised to have heard her speak back. There’s a myriad of expressions on the boy’s face in an instant – ranging from confused to angry. “It’s not _slander,_ cause it’s true, my pops says-“

“Your _father_ is the liar! He’s a monarchist! He-“

“At least my pops has opinions! Yours just copies whoever’s popular-“

Later she wonders vaguely how up until that moment nobody had noticed the two children off to the side, arguing in increasingly escalating voices. How nobody had thought to step in sooner, or to have simply kept the young Burr and young Hamilton from having met at all.

At that moment though she was simply trying to remember if she was supposed to curl her fingers over or under her thumb before throwing the punch.

It the end it doesn’t matter, a punch is a punch, and he deserved it.

Somewhere she hears the familiar sound of her father’s voice, a scandalized, “Theodosia!” Though all of that has faded into the background, because Philip in spite of his split lip, is grinning at her like she’s the greatest thing in the world.

He’s confusing to say the least.

 

2

Maria is to blame for this. The former Miss Jefferson, now Mrs. Eppes had taken to parading Theodosia around the ball until she felt as though her feet might fall off.

Leading her from one eligible bachelor to the next, from the most handsome to the ones that she dared say would likely be confirmed bachelors soon enough. Theodosia made sure to keep a practiced smile on her face with each encounter, only spilling her true feelings on the men when Maria stole her away once again.

“Do not worry, my dearest Theo, I will find you a husband by the end of this ball if it is the last thing I do.”

She certainly does not doubt Maria’s ambitions, though sometimes Theodosia wished they were directed to a different pursuit.

“There is no need for me to rush into any engagement, when the right husband appears surely I will know it.”

Maria just tuts at her. “If I had brothers I would make certain one of them married you, you know this.”

“I do,” she reassures her friend.

“And as we both know you have been starved for proper male company, not lucky as myself to have met young boys that would grow up into charming marriageable young men,” she says this, while casting a longing look at her own husband. “It then falls to me to help guide you on the right path.”

Theodosia had long since discovered that arguing with Maria was useless, so she lets her friend lead her off in the direction of the next man on her long list of possibly eligible bachelors.

It is then, that she sees him. Lurking off to the side from the others, purposely ignored by her friend. Her eyes dwell on his figure, startled by the sense of familiarity in the features of the man. His appearance gives her such pause that she stumbles over her own feet, only stopped from falling by Maria’s steady hand against her arm.

“Theodosia, no,” Maria says, the second her gaze follows. “That man is far from our standards.”

“He looks familiar that’s all,” she insists.

“Of course, he looks familiar, that’s Philip _Hamilton_. Though I cannot see why the President invited them, I mean, you heard the slander that his father wrote about our president. The nerve they must have to show up after that, I cannot understand.”

“I-“ Theodosia is not certain what she had intended to reply with, but suddenly it seemed not to matter, because he looks up then to meet her eyes.

Philip Hamilton.

He has certainly changed since she last saw him years ago as children.

At some point he must cross over, ask her for a chance to dance, and send Maria on her way, but for some reason Theodosia can hardly think straight. Her head dizzy, her heart pounding with a sensation that she cannot explain. This boy which had vexed her as a child had grown into someone entirely different.

Someone who held her with steady hands as he led her around a dance floor.

“Do you remember,” Philip asks, “The last time I asked you to dance with me at the home of a President?”

How could she possibly forget? The memory makes her cheeks color even now, the brief moment where she had dared to show to the world that she was not entirely as lady like as she ought to be.

“I seem to recall you insulting my family’s name beforehand, and you had just had a most unfortunate knock to the head, which must have ridded you of your senses.”

“Ah no, Miss Burr, that would be _you_ who rids me of all my senses.”

 

3

He writes her letters with a single minded determination, filling so many pages that must devote an entire day to reading them. With letters more often than not delivered so frequents as that she scarcely has time to prepare a reply to one, before another arrives. Sometimes there are even poems included, ones that make his intentions to her more than clear.

 _You write as though you are running out of time_ , she tells him in one of her many replies, but he seems to take those words as only the highest of compliments.

The next letter she receives is twice as long as the one she had replied to. Each line expertly crafted as though to compliment her through the prose.

Her own letters are shorter, less time spent on the pleasantries that she so often is forced to show to the public. It is to Philip that she pens her most intimate thoughts and grievances, the ones she could not tell to anyone – not even her father.

It is then that she yearns for his reply, yearns to hear his thoughts on the matter, for Philip Hamilton always has a thought that he believes ought to be shared with the world.

And he never lets her down

 

4

It is late, far later than would be proper for having company over, but Theodosia cares not for proper company.

His feet are light on the floor, his fingers soft where they are entwined with her, sneaking through the halls of her family manor. They must be careful in these encounters. Her father is out of town but the servants will undoubtedly report to him if they hear the sound of their mistress sneaking a man in after hours. Thankfully their desperation for each other is enough to convince him to stay quiet for once in his life.

Her bedroom door creaks far louder than it ever has in her life and for a second they both hold their breaths, willing no other sound to follow. It is only after she has counted to ten in her head with no interruption that she pulls him into her room.

Perhaps it is the secrecy, perhaps it is the fact that she has not seen him in months, or perhaps it is something else entirely, but Theodosia cannot help herself from crossing the distance between them, bringing her lips up to meet his in a kiss that is not as entirely innocent and chaste as it ought to be for a woman of her standing.

Not that Philip seems to mind, for he kisses her back with equal passion, his hands smoothing over the sides of her gown almost reverently. Changing their positions so it is he who controls the kiss, not her.

They only pull apart when it seems the need for air demands it, and even then they stay with their faces only inches apart.

“I love you,” he says into the small space between them.

“And I you.”

“How did I get this lucky?”

“It is not you, Mr. Hamilton, that is the lucky one,” she insists, “But I.”

He kisses her then, with an intent to prove which one of them is the lucky one.

 

5

Mr. Alston is kind to her. He is wealthy and accomplished, and everything a woman in her place ought to be looking for in a husband, but there is one thing that he is not.

He is not Philip Hamilton.

For all his land and status, he will never be the man that had won her heart nearly a year ago at the President’s ball. He will never be the man who wrote her more love letters than she knew what to do with. He will never be the man that had pushed her down onto the sheets of her girlhood bed, pressing kisses to her lips until she forgot how to breathe.

“I cannot marry Mr. Alston, no matter how much you may want me to,” she tells her father, though the words pain her to admit. She cares far too much for her father’s opinion of her, and to let him down now feels to be the greatest shame imaginable.

For a moment he does not reply.

A moment that seems to nearly last the whole of entirety.

Before finally he finds his words, “Why is that, my dear? Has he treated you poorly?”

She can hear the anger in his voice, though it is not her that he is mad at, but rather at the man who had asked for her hand, the man that he imagines must have committed such a fault as to earn Theodosia’s scorn.

She feels the need to right his misconception at once. “No, Mr. Alston has been nothing but kind to me. He has only ever been kind to me. It is for that reason that I cannot marry him.”

“I do not understand.”

“I do not expect you too,” she admits. “But I remember that you once loved my mother so much that you would break rules and boundaries to be with her. I remember the stories mother told me, of how she fell in love with the American soldier, though she was sworn to a man fighting the other side of the war. How she had been so unhappy in her marriage, so unhappy in her life, until you appeared. It is that memory that I wish you to think on now.”

She is not certain that this will work. That it will spare her that disapproval of her father, but she desperately hopes so. And when after a moment he finally nods she continues on.

“There is another man. A man who my heart belongs to so thoroughly that marrying Mr. Alston would be to live a lie,” Theodosia explains. “I would have told you sooner, I dear wish _he_ whom I love would have told you sooner, but it is your disapproval that has always stopped us short and-“

“And you love him,” her father finishes for her. A small smile on the edge of his lips, as he seems to take in the sight of her. “This man I wouldn’t approve of.”

“More than I can even begin to explain.”

“Then you must know, that I will approve of him, for that alone. Whoever is to bring such a smile to my daughter’s lips and such light to her eyes, will always have my approval.”

“Even if he is the son of your political enemy?”

That gives her father a moment’s pause. She can see the moment he puts two and two together, the second his face falls ever so slightly, before slipping on the polite and practiced smile so trademark to the Burr family.

“I had hoped you would have better taste than to marry a Hamilton.”

 

6

“We could elope,” Philip says for what seems like the hundredth time. “We could elope and spare ourselves the misery of watching our fathers attempt to be civil on our wedding day.”

“My father is always civil,” Theodosia insists, though it is a half-hearted attempt at insistence for as she sits in the gardens with Philip she can hear the already escalating voices of their fathers as they debate the finer workings of a wedding. “In any case, it is not proper for one to _elope_.”

“My aunts eloped,” he points out, “All of them, and they are known to be incredible women. The nature of their marriage has not been a slight against them.”

He has made this point before as well. For someone studying law, he had been known to make weak arguments when it came to her. Arguments that made Theodosia certain that if she were a man, that is would be _she_ who ought to be the lawyer.

Then again, he had always confessed to her that he aspired more to be a poet than anything else. Remembered for his words rather than the number of clients he got acquitted.

“My love, it is important to me that my father be at my wedding,” she replies, “You know this, as you know all of my secrets.”

“I know,” he admits, “I just wish there were an easier way to do this.”

That causes a laugh to spill out from Theodosia’s lips, and she turns them to arch an eyebrow at him in pure disbelief. “Philip you must know that this will never be easy, I do not love you because it is _easy_.”

 

7

He presses a kiss against the side of her throat, while his hands move over the lines of her body, exploring her with a patience that they did not have the first time they did this. Here now though he takes her apart inch by inch, worshipping her exposed skin as though this is the greatest gift she could have possibly given him.

It is with his lips along the curve of her breast that he breathes out a desperate sigh. A noise that she returns with one of her own, her fingers tangled through the curls of his hair, her body arching up to meet him.

“Mr. Hamilton,” she says, her voice breaking over the vowels, “Dare I entreat you to find your haste?”

“Mrs. Hamilton,” he replies. Her new name taking on deep sinful meaning as he draws out the syllables to whisper the words just above her bare flesh. “I promise you that I shall bring you pleasures which you can only have imagined before but patience is, as you often tell me, a virtue.”

It would be her own words that come back to bite her in these moments. The hundreds of lessons she has learned on how to be a proper lady which had been drilled into her brain, seemed to be moot now that she had a man between her thighs, a man whom she sworn to love before both god and man.

“Mr. Hamilton. I swear I cannot bear to wait any longer, not when we have already proven our inability to wait for each other.

That earns her a laugh. The feeling of his stuttered breaths against her, drawing shivers down her spine. As they both seem caught up for the second in a memory of another time, when she snuck him through the corridors of her home because of a yearning that only the man she now calls her husband could satisfy.

“Mrs. Hamilton, you have made a most convincing case,” he eventually says when his laughter subsides. This time his lips do not trail a gentle or mindless path, but a direct one, lower and lower, until he brings her that very pleasure that he had only hinted at before.

She comes later in the night with “Mr. Hamilton,” on her lips.

 

8

She watches him idly from the bed as he paces across the floor, looking as though he could wear a hole in the carpet. He's been muttering as he paces back and forth for the past hour, his hair loose and untied from its ribbon falling about his face in a cacophony of curled even messier than usual after he's ran his hands through them repeatedly.

"Tell me what it is that burdens you, my love."

Her soft words get him to stop for a brief moment, looking at her with an expression almost akin to guilt. "Philip?"

"I've challenged George Eacker to a duel."

"What?" She says sharply, even though there is no way she could have misheard him. "Philip you didn't."

"He was insulting my father's honor, and I couldn't let that slide - Theo, my love, you know this, you must understand."

“And for that, this insult of honor, I must chance losing my husband before his time?”

“It is complicated,” Philip simply says, “If you do not understand then…” He trails off at that, beginning his pacing once more but Theodosia refused to watch his antics.

She gathers her skirts about her, rising from their bed. "If you love me at all, you will not do this."

"It would dishonor me to not show up, Theodosia I-"

"I do not care about dishonor," she says sharply. Jerking away from the hand that he had brought up to steady her. "I can only for my husband and our family."

"Our family would suffer from my dishonor," Philip insists.

"Our son will suffer if his father died because of a foolish duel before he is even brought into this world."

This was not how she had intended to tell him. She had planned out a happier affair, but if this would save him, if this would keep Philip at her side...

She rests her hand against the curve of her stomach, though nothing has shown yet. Her nightgown still hanging flat over her figure, but she can imagine what it will soon look like.

This time she doesn't jerk away when Philip brings his hand towards her. Resting his fingers on top of hers.

"I'll stay."

 

9

"What will we name him, our son," Philips voice is light, she can sense his joy intimately, the hand that rests against the curve of her stomach is feather light drawing.

"Did you have any names in mind, my love?"

Surely he must have. Every man thinks of names for their sons, the eldest in particular as the most important, the one that will carry on their legacy. Undoubtedly Philip will have had those very same thoughts.

"Will he share your name, a second Philip for me to look after?" she asks.

But she feels him shake his head ever so slightly behind her.

"I dare hope you are not asking me to bring another Alexander Hamilton into the world, surely we have enough of those as it is."

Philips laugh is a ghost against the back of her neck and almost as if agreeing with her assessment their son moves inside her, kicking against his father's hand.

She smiles when she hears her husband’s laughter cut off and replaced by a sound of amazement.

"I was thinking," Philip says, once their child has quieted, "that perhaps we could name him after your father?"

Surely he must know what that means to her. Theodosia fears for a moment that tears might fall from her eyes, that her voice might cracks as she tests out the name, "Aaron Hamilton," for the first time.

 

10

“My father’s challenged yours to a duel this morning,” she says the words with a slight laugh, as though it had to be a joke.

Certainly when her father had mentioned it to her as they took tea together an hour earlier, she had thought that that was what it was. An absurd notion between old men, who would put this all aside before they even crossed the river. Though it had been on her walk back home that she had begun to consider that a hint of seriousness.

Philip must agree with her assessment, because there is humor in his own voice. “Isn’t challenging people to duels more my pops’ job, than yours?

“My thoughts exactly.”

Her husband squeezes her fingers ever so gently, a quiet reassurance, which followed by a more verbal one.

“Do not worry, love. Even pops is not so irrational as to take the challenge seriously.”

 


End file.
